The Death Of Dune Imperium - A Eulogy

0:00 Dune. It's a really fun word to say. It's also a big old ridge of sand, and it's a book franchise that has a ton of adaptations. Today, I wanted to talk about the death of one of those adaptations. Dune Imperium, the 2020 board game, is about to die. And like all beloved creations, Dune Imperium deserves a eulogy. So, farewell, DI. We hardly knew you. Dune Imperium came out in 2020 as a promotional tie-in to the 2021 Dune movie. Dune Imperium, or DI as we like to say it on the nets, was an immediate success both critically and financially. Initially, movie tie-ins, they're met with some hesitancy, but god dang it, we got a Golden Eye and not a Dragon Ball Evolution, the movie, the game situation going on. Dune Imperium relished in the fact that it was a movie tie-in. We got Paul Trades straight from the movie.

1:02 Leato straight from the movies. Dave Batista, Brendan Frasier all look exactly like their film counterpart. Other leaders like old men and younger ladies also fit right in with the theme and aesthetics from the movies. Plus, there's tons of familiar faces in the cards like Aquaman or Zenaia, and it just lowers that barrier of entry for new players, just that little bit that they need. It adds some pizzazz, adds some accessibility to an already greatl looking game. Then people actually look at the board and you quickly realize each turn presents restrictions and limits that are quickly swallowed by your rivals slowly suffocating you as you gather what limited resources and abilities you can afford.

1:49 The game is intentionally congested and the desert planet only offers you little. Yet, as the game progresses, each player will form schemes and plans and wheels within wheels that spin endlessly as your spice obsessed mind plans the next steps. By the end of a round, the board itself materializes into a story of agents and alliances. With a war about to culminate, plans are revealed, and you gather new cards to strengthen. This game continues for 10 rounds or until the first player crosses the threshold to conquer Dune, the desert planet. And it's a beautiful conclusion with final reveals and plans that tip the scale just enough for a final twist in A1's game.

2:43 DI intends to stress you out. It intends for your plans to go sideways. It wants you to feel a little bit of pain like a good satist. DI fulfills that niche. It gives you just enough that you feel like you can put something into motion, but quickly strips it away from you, making you rethink your next move. So, how does it work? How does Dune Imperion do it? How does it make such a great game? How does it keep things in motion and in movement and tortures you just the right amount that makes you like it? And at its core, I think Dune Imperium is a game of interaction. And it's not only interaction between other players. This isn't your secret Hitlers. This isn't your Twilight Imperium. It isn't Dune from Avalon Hill. What the core interaction is is the cards you have and the ability to access spaces. You're a gorilla in a gun shop. You're able to do whatever you want if you can figure it out. And this is the grand success of the game. Dune Imperium says, "Here are your abilities to reach certain places.

3:49 But I'm not going to give you everything you need. You need to figure it out. You can go and buy what you need, but you're not going to get it right away. It goes in your discard. You're going to have to wait for it. You're going to have to figure out plans in the meantime. The game is only a maximum of 10 rounds. So, what that means is if you buy a card in round one or two, you're only going to see it maybe three or four times at the absolute most. These cards though have a profound effect on your ability to play the game. The merger of the worker placement with the deck building is successful in a way that's unexpected and it creates that interaction between your hand and the board itself and your ability to interact with the board in such a positive way. Along with that, Dune Imperium provides just enough stress between the players that you do feel like you're playing against actual people and not just playing against the systems that Dune Imperium implements.

4:45 There's really four interactions between the players. There's the combat rounds, of course, that's the most obvious, where people are directly pushing in their troops to create this auction effect where people are saying, "Well, I'm willing to invest this much for these rewards. How much are you going to invest?" Then, of course, the second one being the actual placement of agents. When you place an agent down, it blocks that spot for the round. People will have to limit their access based off what you decide to do and where you decide to send your agent. You might not even need to go there, but you just want someone else to not have it. The third interaction is between the alliances. But in order to get that alliance token, you have to be the first one there, and you have to remain their best friend. Even if you might not need to go to the Fman again, you might want to go there just that extra time to block someone from taking it away from you. And then the fourth major interaction is the actual act of buying cards from the store. When you pick up a card, it removes it from the ability from anyone else to buy it. So you might deny someone who wants to build a combat heavy deck of more combat cards, for example. Or you might say, well, this person needs to go to Highliner to win this next combat, so I'm going to remove the one that has the space and guild access by purchasing it myself. There's also other more subtle ways. For example, the secret space on the Benny Jesuit allows you to steal other people's secrets if they have four or more. As well as there is slight bluffin mechanics when you have a large reveal hand with many daggers or you hold on to

6:18 an intrigue for the entire game making people think you might have a powerful endgame intrigue. Overall, this level of interaction with the strong mechanics of a Euro game makes for an extremely streamlined and stressful and tense game that ends and culminates in a successful way where everyone is on the edge of their seats trying to count their last points, seeing where they can possibly get something. It makes for a beautiful finish that always ends in a very tight game. So, that's Dune Imperium, or at least the gist of it. But I can hear your screams in English. I've completely neglected about half the game. Over the past two years, there were two large expansions, Rise of X and Immortality. And Dune Imperium isn't complete without those. In my opinion, they also implement a wonderful amount of devious fuckery. Truthfully, I wouldn't even consider it Dune without both of these expansions. So, let's take a quick look. Dune Imperium Rise of X adds a total of five wonderful amazing new leaders and one leader that has completely destroyed the meta as well as the planet X which you could purchase some permanent buffs in the form of technology as well as powerful dreadnot ships. There's also this interesting overlay that goes on top of the previous Lancrad and Chome area which implements the shipin track. The bane of many people's existences, but it does

7:49 increase the importance of friendliness with the spacing guild as interstellar ship is often considered the best space on the board. There's of course some new cards. There's some new mechanics like infiltration and unload and overall increases the diversity of play. Immortality on the other hand is the newer of the two expansions coming out in 2022 and adds a whole new factions to be friends with the Benny Toyax. These incel fuckers want to do some eugenics on your troops in order to make some sick new cards like a dog in the form of a chair or this sad gorilla. It also adds a whole new research track where you can use microscope icons on your cards in order to gain new benefits as well as family heirlooms in the form of nuclear weapons.

8:39 These nukes or the family atomics allow you to bomb out the imperial row and completely replace it with new cards. And to be honest, I think both of these expansions are required in order to play the true form of Dune Imperial. Once you add on both expansions, trying to play Dune Imperium is like doing origami in a wind tunnel. You have the motions, you have the plans, but there's so much fuckery going on. There's so much blockage. There's so many possible areas of mistakes that it's just not possible to make something beautiful. You're just trying to make it through the end. And that's why I say you need to have four or five different wheels within wheels going on in your mind. Because if one wheel stops, you got to find a way to realign yourself and to come up with a new plan. And it's so much fun because people lose their wheels. People go off the track that they had planned. They can't buy the sword master anymore or they can't get the alliance with the Fman. Instead, they have to come up with an entirely new plan and they only got two rounds left before someone makes that 10point threshold. And they know they need to come up with the last couple points to overtake them.

9:47 And when they draw their five cards at the start of the round, you can see in their eyes, I have new plans. And whenever I tell new players about Dune Imperium, I tell them that the first five points, they're the easy points. You can get them through your friendships. You'll win a random victory. You're going to get the Benny Twaxu point just by going to the research icons and grabbing those beetles. But the last four or five points, those are the ones you have to suffer for. Those are the ones where everyone else is going to gun you down. And the game itself is designed in such a perfectly tight way that it pushes you to come up with creative strategies. If you just go with what's in your mind, you are going to lose. You need to come up with new plans on the fly as the game board develops. And that's why people love Dune Imperium. They love that gentle choke and that photo finish ending where everyone reveals their last secrets, their last intrigues, their last combat potential. And the final points are tallied up and it's so close. And everyone just ends the night mentally exhausted but emotionally fulfilled. And that emotion is stress. It's stress, but it's the good kind of stress. It's the kind of stress you want to plan for.

11:05 It's the kind of stress where you go like, "Dang, I really had to think. I thought and I had a good time about thinking about it. It's a puzzle to be solved and someone's going to solve it. It's just a matter of who gets there first." So, that's Dune Imperium as it is now. Two expansions, the deluxe edition, everything put together into this beautiful, stressful, chaotic game of plans and wheels and of spice and water. Nobody really knows what's going to happen and nobody really has plans that are in place. It's chaos in the best ways. Get three of your friends, play Dune Imperium. But why is this a eulogy? Why am I sad about Dune Imperium? Why is it going to die?

11:52 Last week, there was a big announcement from Direwolf, the producers of the game. The sequel to Dune Imperium is coming out. Dune Imperium Uprising. And it looks fine. It looks good. It looks like Dune Imperium. But what that means is Dune Imperium is going to get obsolete. And it's sad because we haven't had much time with it. Rise of X came out in 2021 and Immortality came out in 2022. And I think most of the fans were fine with a minor expansion. Maybe add in five or six new leaders, add in some new cards, make some balance changes, maybe add new intrigues, new conflicts. There was plenty of potential left in this game.

12:44 The meta, it does exist. People really like rushing the ship and track. People really like getting their swordmaster fast. People really prioritize getting those alliances with the Fman. Dreadnots are mostly ignored and Tessia is queen while Ilban is the Joker. But even with that, it's only been maybe four or five months of this meta. There's still time for it to develop and change. And I think just new conflicts that maybe prioritize different areas of the board, intrigues that have different effects that maybe prioritize the emperor or beny Jesuit. That's all we really would need to keep this game going for another couple of years. I'll I'll say it. I think Dune Imperium Uprising, it's going to be a pretty good game. I hope it's better than Dune Imperium. I will buy Dune Imperium Uprising. I'm going to buy it.

13:41 And I think Direwolf, they're at least trying their best to implement immortality and Rise of Vicks. They released a promotional page from the actual instruction booklet that shows and tells you how you'll actually implement these two expansions and even cards from the original game into the new version into the new sequel, Dune Imperium Uprising. There is tons of good ideas. I think I love the idea of sandworms actually being implemented into the combats. I think the idea of spies kind of in between factions and areas of the board makes a lot of sense. It seems like we might have to maggyver some spy outposts in the Chom and X area, but I think that's fine. It it works out, I think. And of course, there's going to be new elements like the contracts, which I would imagine are endgame intrigues almost wherein they're not as random, but you have to still fulfill some kind of requirement to get a point at the end of the game. That's my guess. But there's going to be other new mechanics. There's going to be an entire new set of leaders. All of the Imperium row could be replaced with the new sets of cards. The intrigue deck will likely be replaced as well. And I think this is all a good idea. These are all good implementations and an update that should happen eventually.

14:56 I'm not mad at Direwolf that they're releasing new content. I understand that the wheels of capitalism and the wheels of corporate greed must be met in time for the actual sequel for the Dune movie. This promotional material must come out. And it's fine. I understand. I'm just sad because I know Dune Imperium as it is now, it's too young to die. It still has so much life left in it. And it's not gone forever. Of course, I have the physical board right here, but when Dune Imperium Uprising comes out, I know and other Dune fans know, we're going to replace this board with the new one. We're going to play the new board. And it's sad because the game as it is now is such a wonderful experience. And I don't feel like we've exhausted it yet.

15:48 I'll give you an example. Not exactly the same, but maybe close enough for most people. If you've played Overwatch before, you'll know Overwatch 2 came out and it really was just Overwatch 1.5, but they removed a fair bit of material. They took things away. Sure, they added new stuff, but core aspects of the game, like the 6v6 has been completely removed from the actual game. And some people might even argue that the original game is superior, but it's not going to have that life anymore. It's not going to have that enthusiastic community. People will always move to the new thing. And I think the reason why people are mad or frustrated about this or just expressing their sadness is Dune Imperium was such a wonderful experience for so many people. And to have it removed rather early on in its life, just three years, and it had two full expansions in that time frame as well. It's a little odd. I would say it's a little quick. It's like it's like we're at this phase now where Dune Imperium is in hospice care. So, the next couple games I'm just going to give it one last harrah. It will be boxed away when Dune Imperium Uprising comes out. And I'm looking forward to Dune Imperium Uprising. I am. I'm legitimately excited, but I'm also legitimately saddened to see a game I love go away.

17:20 the community of Dune Imperium, those people on Tabletop Simulator, they're going to be playing the new version. They're not going to play the old one. If the new one gets those expansions and the updates, people will naturally tend to go to that way. So, that's why today is a eulogy for Dune Imperium as we know it. We are reaching the end phase of Dune Imperium. And you know, this has happened many, many times before. Um, think of Twilight Imperium, one of my other favorite games. fourth edition came out and no one really looked back at third edition. I just want to say goodbye. I want to say goodbye to something that brought people together, that brought my family together, that brought friends together. People were legitimately excited to come over and play it. It was easy to get on the table constantly. And if Dune Imperium Uprising is equally as good, I'm going to say the same praises. I am going to miss Dune Imperium as it is now. It's a wonderful game. I don't recommend buying it just yet. wait for Uprising. I can recommend playing Dune Imperium. It's a great time, but I can't recommend to buy it just yet. Let's see how Dune Imperium Uprising comes out. It probably will replace Dune Imperium.

18:34 So, that's it. That's my eulogy. I'm going to miss you, Dune Imperium. But we'll see your new version. We'll see your metamorphosis. Take care and thanks for watching.